Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews
Backcountry
Backcountry is a survival horror/thriller, based on a true story, only the characters names have been changed. The film stars Missy Peregrym and Mark Roop as Alex and Jen, a couple who live... Somewhere in Canada (it's never specified). After being together for a while, Alex decided to take Jen camping to a place where he would camp a lot growing up. However, things go awry when Alex decides he doesn't need anything a rational person would take to go camping, which lands the two of them right in the middle of a bears territory.
Let me start this off by saying that I have a massive phobia of camping, the concept of camping freaks me out. Hiking? That's fine. But camping is just terrifying. So watching this movie was really interesting, because it was essentially everything I have ever feared about camping and bears. The best comparison I can think of is if someone who was already terrified of the ocean saw Jaws back when that came out, they'd have a similar feeling.
One of the big surprises here was the chemistry between Alex and Jen. In the first act of this movie, before any of the bear related stuff starts to happen, it's mostly just the banter between these two. And it was really enjoyable and entertaining. However, this leads me to the weaker parts in the writing, which was the scenes during the more survival focused parts of the film. Not that these were badly written in any real way, but simply that earlier scenes outdid these later parts of the film. It's like Wall-E, there's nothing wrong with the scenes set on the human space cruise ship in the second half, but the apocalyptic scenes were far better.
However, of the issues I had with Backcountry, that was the only significant one. My other issues are just gripes, but since I'm reviewing this movie, I should bring them up. First and foremost, there's the shaky cam. There is a lot of very unnecessary shaky cam throughout this movie. Not just during the tense moments, but during the calm moments where the camera has no reason to be shaking. What's worse is that the shots themselves are usually pretty good, only you can't see them because the camera is usually shaking for no reason. Also, with the exception of a scene later on involving a bone being broken (that looked real), the fake blood in this movie looks really fake. Now, this was a low budget film, so I can understand why it looks fake, but the facts are still the facts, and the blood really does look fake.
Final Rating
Backcountry is by no means a bad movie, I still enjoyed the hell out of the horror and the dialogue between the two characters. However, it's by no means a perfect film, and suffers from many common flaws that we usually see in modern films. As for my personal recommendation, I'd say that if you're looking for something good, then this is a good movie. Also, if you know someone who for some insane reason actually goes camping, make them watch this movie, that'll do the trick.
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